“Make your way home,” by Carrie R. Moore, Tin House, 336 pages
What makes a place home? Is it the memories that took place there? Does it require living there a certain amount of time? Is home where those you love reside? Or is it a feeling?
In “Make Your Way Home,” a debut collection of short stories by Carrie R. Moore, the author explores the concept of home through a kaleidoscope of stories set across the American South, including New Orleans and Mississippi near the Gulf. In one, a man tries to win over the love of his life despite a family curse. Another, written in the second person, follows a lifeguard in Alabama. In Florida, a young woman is pregnant at the same time as her mother, and the young woman is navigating conflict with her mom over next steps.
Regardless of where or who the story is about, Moore’s writing shines in the details and the truths they reveal.
Cover of “Make your way home.”
PROVIDED PHOTO
Her writing feels deeply grounded in place and emotional insight which feels specific to the place. She manages to pull off a collection of non-interconnected stories that feel unified. The connection shines through in not just the places Moore picks but the way the characters think within those settings. What the characters find normal, their trauma and cultural backgrounds all feel true, and they’re clearly the result of thorough research.
When a character in the final story who left Texas after a hurricane is asked why she’s moving to Maine (“What’s in Maine, aside from crazy winters?”), she cycles through answers in her head: Permanence. Water. Greenery.
But she answers simply: “Well, what’s here?”
The “here” in each story of the book is the real triumph of the collection.
In the story set in New Orleans, a deaconess named Sariah wrestles with both the feeling that God is far away and that she’s falling for a new church member. Unlike other books with short stories or chapters, Moore’s story is not just vaguely set in the city with some passing references to Mardi Gras or Bourbon Street. Instead, the setting is one particular church community and focuses on this one couple within it.
Over the course of the story, it’s revealed how different hurricanes have displaced people, and the main character wonders aloud about future storms.
Sometimes, living in the South feels like living in constant precarity: storms come, circumstances change, and life happens. “Make Your Way Home” is an ode to homes and those who make it so, even when they aren’t perfect, aren’t the ones we’d choose and aren’t guaranteed to stay in. In these stories, Moore deftly conjures what it means to belong and what it means to long for that belonging.
Whether it’s navigating complicated parent dynamics, romantic relationships, new places or medical care, Moore’s stories about survival and perseverance are like taking a road trip in the South and being a fly on the wall in different people’s lives. Her collection is a vital exploration of how the past — both recent and otherwise — shapes us into the people we are.